The Lazarus Zoo: Resurrecting Extinct Species

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Museum is attempting to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger, using pup cells harvested from storage jars in alcohol from 70 years ago. The tiger was hunted to extinction, and has the ironic distinction of receiving legal protection the same year that the last of its kind (named Benjamin) died at the Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936. Other cloning attempts at conserving endangered species include the South Asian banteng on an Ohio farm, the world's last burcado (a Spanish mountain goat), a wild Asian ox called the gaur, and even a woolly mammoth." They're hoping for a live birth in 2010.

Comments

Telomere damage

[PD]

Clones have short telomeres. But, do the offspring of clones have normal telomeres? Dolly had some lambs, so the answer should be known. If the offspring's telomeres are normal, that's good news because even if the clone has problems, the offspring might not have those problems.

Re:Telomere damage

[tsa]

I was wondering about that too. The telomeres must be restored in the genitals somehow or the offspring would live shorter than their parents...
By the way, I saw a tidbit about resurrecting the Tasmanian devil on TV last night, and there were some people that claimed they had seen live ones and are not convinced that it's really extinct. That would be great because if they are resurrected from the puppy cells from the jars you can bet that a live one comes wandering out of the forest just then. And then you can compare the DNA of the 'real' tiger with the cloned one to see how much it differs!